


if i die in my sleep

by epilogues



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Dreams, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 15:29:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15560829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epilogues/pseuds/epilogues
Summary: Second chances, second chances, second chances. The number twenty-five sits heavy, a meaning Pete can’t put his finger on.





	if i die in my sleep

**Author's Note:**

> it's 3:48am, i don't know what the fuck this is but im gonna post it before i think abt it too much
> 
> **WARNING: hey so this fic contains a lot of vaguely horror/surreal imagery!! if ur sensitive to body horror, suffocation/drowning, bugs, or just shit like that in general, please either don't read or drop a comment asking for more specific content warnings! stay safe!! (you can also ask questions abt content on my tumblr @fortheairwaves)

“God, Patrick, can you turn your heat up? It’s freezing in here.”

Patrick gives his boyfriend a confused once-over as he gets into bed. “Pete, you’re wearing a winter coat and long pants. And it’s May. How the fuck are you cold?”   
  
Pete tries to shrug but just ends up shivering instead. “I don’t know. I feel like I’ve been cold for months.”    
  
“Huh. Well, come here, get under the covers and warm up.” Patrick lifts the edge of his blanket for Pete to crawl under.    
  
“Thanks,” Pete says once he’s wrapped in the blanket and around Patrick. “I don’t know why I’ve been so cold lately, I’m sorry for all the complaining.”   
  
“It’s okay,” Patrick says through a yawn. “We can talk about it in the morning or whatever, I’m already half-asleep.”    
  
He rolls onto his side and throws an arm around Pete, burying his face in Pete’s chest and starting to snore only a few minutes later. Pete can’t help but press a kiss to the top of his head before he’s overcome by another fit of shivering.    
  
Pete pulls the blanket closer around himself, snuggles closer to Patrick, and falls asleep still cold.    


* * *

  
_ Cold. Pete’s freezing. He can’t get warm, he’s rubbing at his arms but the skin keeps falling away.  _ __  
__  
_ Dark. The darkness around him swirls and twists into a long, dark corridor, and he starts walking. There’s a bright light shining behind him but only a dim, flickering glow from ahead.  _ __  
__  
_ There are voices echoing, the corridor is melting away into a room made entirely of stained glass. The light coming in through the walls trembles, firelight, and the pictures of dark shapes tremble with it.  _ __  
__  
_ Second chances, second chances, second chances. The number twenty-five sits heavy, heavy, a meaning Pete can’t put his finger on.  _ __  
__  
_ Patrick’s face fades into view in front of him, and he’s screaming something that Pete can’t make out. A deep blue crystal falls from above and dissolves Patrick entirely. Pete’s left to grab at the pile of bones collapsing in his place, except his skeletal hands keep falling into the mix as well.  _ __  
__  
_ The room falls into an elevator shaft, and Pete’s left clutching at ropes so he doesn’t fall. The cord in his hands twists suddenly, lashing out around his neck, and just as soon as he’s falling, he’s caught in the center of an hourglass. The sand is filling his mouth and throat, he can’t breathe, and he’s numb from the shoulders down.  _ __  
__  
_ The hourglass shatters into a thousand tiny mice, chittering in their high-pitched voices. The only words Pete can make out are “Time’s up!” _ __  
__  
_ A dark figure takes his hand and yanks him down, through the floor and further still, down to the same flickering glow Pete had seen earlier. For a second he remembers what it’s like to be warm.  _ __  
__  
_ The sound of paper signed, hands shook, deals made. The feeling of amnesia, closed eyes, inexplicably cold. The - _ __  
  
Pete jolts awake. He’s drenched in a freezing cold sweat, and his teeth are chattering despite the many layers he’s wearing. He feels physically shaken, like someone’s picked him up and shaken him around like rag doll, like someone’s remixed him from the inside out.    
  
Patrick’s bedside clock tells him that it’s 2:14am. Pete shakes his head a little and shifts so that he’s lying on his back instead of on his side. He doesn’t know why a stupid, incoherent dream is fucking with him so much, but he’s still achingly cold as sleep pulls him under once again.

* * *

“It’s almost your birthday, do you want to do anything special?”    
  
Pete shrugs. “Let’s go to South America, or,  or the Caribbean, anywhere where it’s warm.” He’s only half-joking.    
  
Patrick rolls his eyes. “I need a bit more advance notice for that. We could go to, fuck, I don’t know. Florida could work, maybe? I’ve never been to Orlando, so that could be fun.”   
  
“But we’ve been to Orlando together,” Pete says, confused. He remembers the trip well -  sunburn and Patrick’s hands rubbing aloe onto his back, jumping into the hotel pool and accidentally splashing some poor old woman, losing his sunglasses and spending the rest of the week squinting, and -    
  
“Pete, none of that happened?” Patrick interrupts, and Pete realizes he’s been speaking out loud this whole time. “We’ve never been there. You’ve never been there.”   
  
Pete blinks. “No, we…” The memories he’s reaching for slip just out of reach, Tantalus’s fruit. “Huh. I guess we haven’t. I don’t know what all that was about, sorry.”   
  
Patrick gives him a worried look but lets the subject drop. “It’s okay, we can still try and plan a trip if you want.”   
  
“Eh, I don’t know, we can just stay here,” Pete says. “Hey, as long as I’ve got you, I’m happy.” He proves his point with an obnoxious kiss to Patrick’s cheek, and Patrick smiles.    
  


* * *

  
_ “Twenty-five years. That’s the most you can have.”  _ __  
__  
_ “I want it,” Pete finds himself saying. He watches the words crawl out of his mouth and wrap around his arms like thin silver chains. “Please.”  _ __  
__  
_ There’s a rumbling from under his feet, and Pete’s standing in the center of a cemetery. Every headstone bears his name, and he starts to run as hands with all-too-familiar tattoos reach for him from under the dirt.  _ __  
__  
_ The silver words have become snakes, and they trip him, sending him sprawling into an empty grave. “I want it, I want it, I want it,” they whisper.  _ __  
__  
_ Pete screams as dirt starts to fall from above, but his voice is stolen when the dirt turns to sand and he’s back in the same hourglass as before. He pushes against the glass wall until it turns to water in his hands and washes away all of him until he’s a skeleton on the floor.  _ __  
__  
_ There’s a faint, constant ticking in the distance. He always thought he was Peter Pan, but now there’s a hook where his hand used to be and he’s running from the crocodile’s tick-tick-tick while his youth slips away.  _ __  
__  
_ The second star to the right burns bright in his eyes, and he watches it go supernova and burn itself out. The black hole pulls him down, down, down until he’s crashing into a giant scroll of illegible text.  _ __  
__  
_ The yellowed paper bends and folds all around him, the words suffocating him — “I want it, twenty-five years, I want it, twenty-five years, please, twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-three - “ — and when the countdown reaches zero Pete falls back into space.  _ __  


* * *

There’s one week until Pete’s birthday, and he should be excited, he’s turning twenty-five, that’s exciting, isn’t it? But he’s nothing but cold, cold all the time, head spinning from the dreams he still doesn’t understand.    
  
False memories keep sneaking into his subconscious, leaving only when Patrick corrects them with an ever-deepening frown.    
  
“Pete, you’ve seriously been scaring me these last few weeks, I think you should go see a doctor.”   
  
Pete rolls his eyes. “Hey, doc, I’m cold and keep having dreams. What’s wrong with me? Oh, right -  _ absolutely nothing _ , because those things happen to everyone.”   
  
“Being constantly freezing at the end of May isn’t normal, Pete,” Patrick insists, not for the first time. “I’m just worried.”   
  
“And I’m fine,” Pete says, because even if he’s feeling fine less and less, Patrick doesn’t need to worry. “Hey, do you want to go check out that new record shop down the street in a few? They just opened last week, I think.”   
  
Patrick deliberates for a moment before agreeing, and Pete beams at him as he throws on a third hoodie and some ratty old sneakers.   
  
They walk to to the store since it’s not even a mile away, and Pete’s just watching Patrick shop happily when he sees an album called  _ Deal with the Devil _ at the front of a heavy metal display.    
  
The words knock something loose inside of him, and it feels like getting gently tapped with a bus. A deal with the devil. Contracts, the glow of hellfire, twenty-five years. The pieces are all threaded on the same string, but Pete can’t quite pull them together yet.   
  
Just then, the AC in the shop kicks on, a dull hum creeping across the room and sending Pete into another fit of shivering.    
  
“You okay?” Patrick asks, looking up from the stack of Costello records he’s looking through, and Pete nods through gritted teeth.

* * *

_ “You have three days. I hope your twenty-five years have been worth it.” There’s a laugh that’s neither high nor low in pitch, barely a sound at all but a hand around Pete’s throat.  _

_ He gasps for air until the hand shifts into a spider and crawls away into a jar that’s overflowing with wriggling limbs of insects and humans alike. The humans are the small ones, though, getting repeatedly crushed by the large feet of the bugs. The jar bursts apart, its contents flying towards Pete, and he ducks and falls into a deep lake. _ __  
__  
_ Patrick’s face wavers in and out of view in the rippling waters, looking confused and a little lost, and Pete calls out to him only to inhale a mouthful of water.  _ _ He spits it out immediately, only half-surprised when his teeth come out as well. The lake laughs at him as it recedes, leaving Pete face to face with a cracked mirror.  _ __  
__  
_ Pete peers into it cautiously, catching only a glimpse of a man with his eyes sewn shut before a deep red hand reaches out and pulls him through the mirror.  _ __  
__  
_ Stone cold ground despite the tangible heat of the air, and Pete remembers a stone cold night when he was walking alone and there was a bang and he was, he is here.  _ __  
__  
_ A scroll is unrolled, blank space for a signature just in front of Pete’s face, and the blood from the wound he didn’t realize he has in his chest seeps out and writes his name.  _ __  
__  
_ Twenty-five years. A soul for twenty-five more years.  _ __  
__  
_ The answer comes to him, and he’s throwing up before the words really sink in. The vomit bubbles up into a kiss against his lips, it tastes like Patrick and everything else Pete isn’t ready to leave.  _ __  
__  
_ It’s been twenty-four years and three hundred sixty-one days. The three remaining days are spilling from Pete’s eyes and mouth and nose and drowning him from the inside out by their sheer lack of number. _ __  


* * *

“Hey, Patrick?”

Patrick looks up from where he’s restringing one of his guitars. “Yeah?”

“I love you,” Pete says. He knows there was more to that sentence that he had planned, but somehow, that’s enough.

Patrick smiles a little, eyes crinkling just a bit at the edges and making Pete fall for him all over again. “I love you too."

* * *

_ Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Annie’s haunting him tonight, and Pete’s running from red hair and red horns and red stains on his shirt. _

_ He’s running down the same corridor from the first dream, and he knows where the warm glow leads now but he’s so cold that there’s no choice but to follow it. There are footsteps chasing him, nothing for them to belong to but themselves, the sound enough to keep him running. There are whispers too, whispers that run up his spine like moths before they crumple to ash.  _

_ Pete can hear Patrick singing all around him, he’s tripping on the words and the melodies and he wants to slow down and tell them goodbye but he just keeps running.  _

_ The ceiling shudders and breathes out a cloud of thick smoke that Pete can’t see through. He can feel it sinking into his lungs and he doesn’t force it out because it’s the first time he’s been warm in months. He is bones, and bones can’t suffocate. _

_ The light at the end of the corridor is getting brighter, harsher, and the heat is so intense that Pete can feel what’s left of his skin melting down over what’s left of him. There’s an insistent beeping just at odds with the ever-present ticking of the clock, a discordant song. _

_ Pete’s eyes harden into crystal balls and fall from their sockets, clattering to the floor in front of him. He can’t see the futures they show.  _

_ The clock strikes midnight somewhere. Cinderella runs home, the clock stops ticking, Pete is twenty-five, and Pete is gone again. _

 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!! comments/kudos are really appreciated!


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